Unable to even start the game, 5 day old ticket with major runaround from the support team.

[bwzsclem.3786]

Tuesday, in anticipation of the Mad King event I updated my GW2 client. Shortly after the initial splashpage download, the program crashes with this error:

 

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Gw2Setup-64.tmp
Application Version: 1.0.0.1
Application Timestamp: 615b55f4
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.23539
Fault Module Timestamp: 57c99b8f
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000000000001815d
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 2d41
Additional Information 2: 2d41ba38c7ec428b4a830f39b6244061
Additional Information 3: 8338
Additional Information 4: 833814d99bfd1f99f52997c071af07ed

 

For the next three days I was give several generic response things to do: turn off AV, reinstall, send a hijackthis report, send a second hijackthis report 2 days later despite no changes, disabled all startup services, create a new profile, update drivers... etc.

 

None of these worked, same error every time. Most of these things I tried before even contacting support.

 

The game worked fine two weeks ago, and I have made no changes to my PC since then.

 

And for the last two days they have been instructing me to do tasks that I've already posted in the ticket history that I've done before with no positive result or change. It is clearly there in my ticket history.

 

The Mad King event is time limited and now that I've been stuck in limbo for most of the week, and likely will not get this resolved by the weekend, I don't think I'm going to have enough time to accomplish the required dailies.

 

I've repeatedly asked them to bump me up the support chain, as I have _already_ tried nearly all of the boilerplate responses before even submitting the ticket.

 

Here is the last step I have done:

 

* Removed HD, swapped in a spare, reinstalled my OS, updated my drivers, tested the game.

 

On Windows 7, fresh install, same error

 

On Win10 fresh install, game works fine.

 

No I cannot run Win10 on my personal PC for security purposes, I did this as a test to demonstrate that this was a legit problem with the client and not one with my hardware.

 

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Might try some of the 'fixes' found here:  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ntdll.dll

Good luck.

[bwzsclem.3786]

12 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Might try some of the 'fixes' found here:  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ntdll.dll

Good luck.

Yeah, I've tried most of that before submitting the ticket, and everything they've asked me to do the last 5 days is basically the same thing.

 

I even tried a fresh OS install, which would have solved any ntdll issues. It's not ntdll crashing guildwars2, it's guildwars2 crashing ntdll.

[Ashantara.8731]

13 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Might try some of the 'fixes' found here:  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ntdll.dll

@bwzsclem.3786, do not download any ntdll.dll from any of the third party websites that show up on Google!

Besides, I doubt this would help anyway. There is another thread about this that makes it clear that the current client is incompatible with Windows 7 (and why).

[bwzsclem.3786]

7 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

There is another thread about this that makes it clear that the current client is incompatible with Windows 7 (and why).

I wonder why the support team didn't direct me to that thread when I stated I was running Win7?

[bwzsclem.3786]

24 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

There is another thread

I've spent the last ten minutes searching for it, do you have a link I can follow?

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, bwzsclem.3786 said:

I've spent the last ten minutes searching for it, do you have a link I can follow?

Edit - Found it:

Not exactly a crash issue analysis but referring to graphics issues. Sorry, my bad.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Ashantara.8731

[bwzsclem.3786]

9 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Found it:

Uh, that's for people who can actually load the client. My game doesn't even get as far as trying to let me login to the launcher, LONG before and DirectX using processes are loaded.

 

It literally crashes within 10 seconds of me clicking the launcher icon, before it even tries to load the game client. The launcher doesn't care what version of directx you use, it's just a launcher.

[Razinth.6389]

I am on Windows 10 and I am having a similar issue as you. keep getting a appcrash in the event viewer and shows the GW2-64.tmp file. I just submitted a ticket today. I have been having issues here and there, but a reboot would fix it, now nothing will fix it.

 

If I try to uninstall the game i get the same issue. I even tried to rename the folder and re-install and then got a appcrash on the installer. Very frustrating 😞

May not be the same issue, but the below is the error i see:
Faulting application name: Gw2-64.tmp, version: 1.0.0.1, time stamp: 0x615f3980
Faulting module name: Gw2-64.tmp, version: 1.0.0.1, time stamp: 0x615f3980
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x00000000002d829d
Faulting process id: 0x3754
Faulting application start time: 0x01d7bd6c6dedbf77
Faulting application path: D:\Program Files\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2-64.tmp
Faulting module path: D:\Program Files\Games\Guild Wars 2\Gw2-64.tmp
Report Id: 24bc91ec-388b-4bad-be2f-db767ea30268
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

Edited October 10, 2021 by Razinth.6389

[Healix.5819]

 

If you re-installed Windows, did you try GW2 before doing anything else, only installing the bare minimum to get it running? You could also try it under safe mode with networking, and rename Gw2Setup-64.exe to Gw2-64.exe to have it work from its current folder rather than %temp%, though that should only be a problem with certain software installed.

I can confirm GW2 runs on Windows 7, at least to fully patch the game.

 

2 minutes ago, bwzsclem.3786 said:

The launcher doesn't care what version of directx you use, it's just a launcher.

After the initial gray window, it uses DX9 and is actually a web page rendered by CoherentUI.

[Ashantara.8731]

39 minutes ago, bwzsclem.3786 said:

Uh, that's for people who can actually load the client. My game doesn't even get as far as trying to let me login to the launcher

I know. That's why I wrote:

50 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Not exactly a crash issue analysis but referring to graphics issues. Sorry, my bad.

Again, sorry that I remembered wrong.

[bwzsclem.3786]

25 minutes ago, Razinth.6389 said:

May not be the same issue, but the below is the error i see:

A very similar error though your exception code is STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN (0xc0000409), and mine is a access violation (c0000005)

 

Neither of these should happen in any production distributed software. These are both memory allocation errors and there should be no way they are happening.

 

Please keep me updated on your ticket, and I will update here as the process continues.

 

Good luck.

[bwzsclem.3786]

3 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

Again, sorry that I remembered wrong.

It's all good, I sincerely appreciate you digging up the data. Not everyone is willing to help others and I'd rather someone try with no result than no one try at all.

 

Best regards.

[bwzsclem.3786]

9 minutes ago, Healix.5819 said:

 

 <snip>rename Gw2Setup-64.exe to Gw2-64.exe to have it work from its current folder rather than %temp%, though that should only be a problem with certain software installed.

I can confirm GW2 runs on Windows 7, at least to fully patch the game.

 

After the initial gray window, it uses DX9 and is actually a web page rendered by CoherentUI.

Well dx9 shouldn't be an issue right now then right?

 

Anyway, I tried what I snipped earlier in the ticket though not after, so trying that now from a folder off C:\. Nope same error. And it created a gw2-64.tmp file. That's interesting...

 

Thanks for the suggestion, this is more than the support team has offered.

 

Best regards.

 

 

[Razinth.6389]

22 hours ago, bwzsclem.3786 said:

A very similar error though your exception code is STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN (0xc0000409), and mine is a access violation (c0000005)

 

Neither of these should happen in any production distributed software. These are both memory allocation errors and there should be no way they are happening.

 

Please keep me updated on your ticket, and I will update here as the process continues.

 

Good luck.

Been working with support since yesterday and done several things, but still not found a solution. At one point they did have me go to MSConfig and disable all non-MS services and then stop a all the startup apps. Unfortunately, one program that did not take to this was my TrentMicro AV, for some reason that was still running.

 

Out of curiosity I manually killed TM AV app and then stopped the services that it would let me. One of those services 'Trent Micro Active Data Service' would not let me stop it. I then ran GW2 and it updated and showed me the launcher page and it installed all the updates. I then re-enabled TM AV and it still opens. Thinking I may create a exclusion for the GW2 executable as it may of been causing the problem. 

 

Not sure if this is TM AV specific, but try to disable your AV and see if it lets you in.

[bwzsclem.3786]

I'm glad you found a solution, unfortunately disabling my antivirus didn't help. I don't have trend micro though, but I'm still stuck.

 

 

[MarkoGold.7126]

did you turn on dx11 in game settings before ? from what i know dx11 requires win10 and with them fully moving to dx11 eventually you might as well switch.

[PseudoNewb.5468]

Hmmm.. you say you reinstalled windows 7... but could you run Microsoft's system file checker anyways and see if it comes up with anything?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e

probably won't show anything...

If other windows 7 players haven't run into problems, I wonder if there is a specific configuration causing this. Unfortunately if the is some kind of bug, with a specific configuration and support can't track down what it is, it could be very hard to fix.

 

Hmmm here is another idea, does running the program with the -repair flag crash?

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/201863008

Edited October 13, 2021 by PseudoNewb.5468

[Ashantara.8731]

On 10/11/2021 at 1:51 AM, Razinth.6389 said:

Out of curiosity I manually killed TM AV app and then stopped the services that it would let me. One of those services 'Trent Micro Active Data Service' would not let me stop it.

Security software like Firewalls and Antiviruses are programmed to not be able to be stopped that easily, because if you could stop them by simply ending the service(s) in the Task Manager, any malware could do the same.

Your options are to disabled the AV shields for a period of time (at least my AV provides me with such an option by right-clicking the program's notification area icon), or to temporarily uninstall the software for testing purposes (which is a hassle, so I wouldn't recommend it - at least backup the software's configuration before you do so, so that you can easily re-apply it after reinstallation).

On 10/10/2021 at 3:46 AM, bwzsclem.3786 said:

Anyway, I tried what I snipped earlier in the ticket though not after, so trying that now from a folder off C:\. Nope same error. And it created a gw2-64.tmp file. That's interesting...

It's generally a smart thing not to install stuff under C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) if you can help it. Only system related stuff should go there to avoid any such problems and because it's easier to reinstall Windows that way without having to reinstall everything else from scratch.

So make a separate Windows partition and install your games etc on a different partition, if possible.

Edited October 13, 2021 by Ashantara.8731

[Morden Kain.3489]

Something I have yet to see you try, is the 32-bit version of the application.  I know it limits you to 4GB of RAM, however it would erase that as a potential.  On the plus side, the 32-bit version can use the same DAT file as the 64-bit version.

[bwzsclem.3786]

1 hour ago, Morden Kain.3489 said:

Something I have yet to see you try, is the 32-bit version of the application.  I know it limits you to 4GB of RAM, however it would erase that as a potential.  On the plus side, the 32-bit version can use the same DAT file as the 64-bit version.

I've tried the 32 bit client, same thing it just takes slightly longer to crash to the same error.

[bwzsclem.3786]

Updating the thread, support has washed their hands of it and told me they can't do anything about it.

 

After all the money I've spent on the game, they're shrugging their shoulders and telling me to kick bricks...

[Gypsyrose.5736]

If you uninstall  something from you're computer bits and pieces can still remain. I had a game long ago that no matter what I did I could not get it to work right because uninstalling it was still leaving whatever was causing my issue on my pc. So I talked to a tech friend and they told me to download REVO uninstaller the free version, I did and it gives you the option to remove every part of the game or whatever else you are uninstalling so nothing is left behind. I know it is a small shot in the dark but you might try it. It did help me when nothing else would. I still use it to this day. After you uninstall something it shows you everything left behind and ask you if you want to remove it. I was shocked at how much crap is left on a pc even after it is uninstalled.

 

Edited October 15, 2021 by Pink Floyd Rocks.9704

[bwzsclem.3786]

One of the steps I did during the support ticket was a fresh install of my OS on an empty drive, so I don't think it is old bits hanging around that is causing the problem.

[Healix.5819]

Did you try installing Windows without doing anything else and without it automatically installing any updates or drivers? Did you ever try it under safe mode?

Windows 7 itself isn't a problem, and you know your hardware isn't, so the problem is with software that is specific to your hardware. If you're sure your computer had no changes whatsoever when it stopped working, then GW2 probably introduced something that your drivers don't support, or maybe adding DX11 brought back bugs from years ago - the launcher would crash under certain refresh rates and color settings.

On 10/13/2021 at 9:29 PM, bwzsclem.3786 said:

I've tried the 32 bit client, same thing it just takes slightly longer to crash to the same error.

Running the 32-bit client on a 64-bit OS will automatically swap to the 64-bit client. You have to launch it with -32 to prevent the swap. The 32-bit client was discontinued however, so the most you're going to get out of it is a message stating that.